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Construction companies from around the country discussed the opportunities this year at New York Build 2026, especially around the data center construction boom. Beneath the buzz, however, companies were also rethinking how to overcome familiar limitations in the space.
Construction Dive participated in several panel discussions at the conference. Below are some of the top talking points from the exhibition.
1. Public rejection is paramount
Data center project contractors can no longer rely on speed and technical execution to unlock awards in the booming industry.
The community feeling around these project sites is quickly becoming one of the more immediate risks to slow down the pace of construction. This is especially true in dense urban markets like New York City.
For this reason, panelists said developers increasingly need to treat community benefits as part of the project’s scope. For contractors, this means that the award of a data center will often also require some attention to upgrades to the surrounding infrastructure, for example, or improvements to the existing network.
Without such buy-in, projects could ultimately face delays due to political resistance or community rejection. New York, for example, is currently debating whether to impose a construction moratorium on massive data center builds. Maine recently introduced legislation to freeze the construction of large data centers until November 2027, the Wall Street Journal reports.
“We should say yes, but with the right requirements,” said Rob LoBuono, principal of San Francisco-based design firm Gensler, during the exhibition.
2. Power is the greatest keeper
The ability to secure reliable power is fast becoming the defining factor in where large projects are located.
In New York, strong demand for artificial intelligence development is clashing with a aging power grid and environmental regulations. Panelists said the mismatch could ultimately limit the region’s ability to compete for multibillion-dollar hyperscale projects. A hyperscale facility could share more than 1,000 megawatts of power in a single location, for example.
As a result, panelists said potential developments in the city would focus more on smaller colocation facilities closer to users. Areas such as New York state also feature desirable locations.
In the end, however, the panelists agreed that more alternative energy solutions, such as battery and nuclear storage, are needed.
“We’re at a point where if you don’t make these upgrades, you’re missing out on one of the biggest infrastructure booms we’ve seen in our lifetime,” said Kelly Bacon, vice president and data center market leader at Dallas-based AECOM.
3. AIs will only be as good as the data behind them
Contractors are experimenting more AI and robotics tools in the workplaces. Effectiveness, however, depends heavily on the quality of the underlying project data.
Panelists repeatedly emphasized that inconsistent models and poor coordination between teams can undermine even the most advanced tools. Vincent Poon, director of the VDC department at Structure Tone, a New York City-based general contractor, invoked the oft-used phrase, “garbage in, garbage out.”
In successful processes, companies managed to align workflows between technologies in a single loop. For example, robots first scan the installed work and compare it to the digital model. AI then analyzes the load for any discrepancies and prompts crews to correct issues when necessary. The approach promises to improve execution and ultimately how information moves through a project, Poon said.
4. Speed to market more urgent than ever
The pressure to deliver projects as quickly as possible, especially around data center projects, is accelerating the adoption of prefabrication strategies.
Panelists said modular techniques allow crews to move work off-site, ultimately easing some labor constraints and maintaining tighter quality control for final construction. In some projects, this has become essential to meet pressing project deadlines.
“We have to pre-engineer, pre-plan, pre-fabricate a lot of our systems. In the building itself, we’re seeing a lot of pre-fabrication,” LoBuono said. “We’re actually seeing it as the only way to get the speed to market that’s being driven in this economy for data centers.”
Failure in these projects, which might have been manageable in traditional construction, could have immediate consequences in these technology-intensive facilities. Issues such as leaks can lead to significant financial risk for the developers of these releases.
